Haruko's Paranormal Laboratory (2015)

"Do you have a warranty?"

If you are in the mood for something super quirky that looks like it was made on a shoestring budget, search no further, Haruko’s Paranormal Laboratory is here to serve your quirky needs. It felt like writer/director Lisa Takeba brainstormed as many strange things as she could and then strung them all together in a surreal story.

Haruko is an odd little duck who has always desperately wanted to have a paranormal adventure. She’s been begging for a UFO to visit her for years especially after her brother was taken up in one. She complains about every show on her 1953 television set. Unseen to her a counter flips over a number for every complaint and curse word she utters. When it hits 10,000 her television turns into a man with a tv on his head and a super dong for other activities. They quickly become sex buddies. After a while he tires of being a house boyfriend doing all the domestic activities and goes out to find a job. Fortunately for him, he speaks 12 languages and lands a couple of teaching jobs on TV and the radio. Haruko works with a sex crazed woman turned “artistic” arsonist. Her next-door neighbor makes sex art out of veggies. The most dedicated TV licenser on the planet makes sure she pays her fees whether the television works like a normal one or becomes a man. There’s an “artistic” masked coin bandit and a Friday the 13th Jason cosplayer who follows her around. She also finds out some kinky news about her father and mother.

I’m sure there was some deeper message and social commentary on feeling socially alienated, the boredom of working a meaningless job, being unable to make your real passion make money (tea stain art?), and only being able to find true love with a television set, but it was a little hard to strain out with all the bizarre paranormal and abnormal people wandering around. If you ever wondered what an R rated Pee Wee Herman’s Playhouse made in Japan might be like, this would come close. Where else could you see a drugged-up television set have a dance-off with a camera?

22 August 2024

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